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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2019-08-24, 20:51

Quote:
Originally Posted by kscherer View Post
Those 300+ cable channels will be worth nothing without large cable company contracts, and no one will want them.

[...]

Everyone else will have to develop their own apps and hope for subscribers, or die trying.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Most of the cable channels are owned by the big studios, who could absorb their content into their streaming services, but not all of them are — most notably, the AMC and Discovery families of networks aren't. Does that mean AMC has to launch AMC+, and Discovery has to launch Discovery+? Without having these direct lines to peoples' wallets, are they doomed to die, or else get bought out by companies that do have that line?

Maybe, but I'm not sure. I think we'll see a distinction between "premium" exclusive content and non-exclusive content. Disney+ is built on being the exclusive home for content from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic — those are the five icons on the home screen. But Disney also owns ABC, and Freeform, and the FX family of networks. What will they do with these brands? Will they try to make FX into a true premium network and sell subscriptions to FX+? Actually, they did just the opposite. They recently shut down FX+, after it launched under Fox ownership a year ago. They moved the content into Hulu.

That Hulu still exists as a separate service in addition to Disney+ is maybe a hint as to how Disney thinks this is all going to shake out. Disney is investing in original content for Freeform, but they know better than to try to launch Freeform+. I think there will still be services that aggregate and deliver non-exclusive content, that effectively manage a bunch of bulk content subscriptions for their subscribers. Nobody wants to deal with a bunch of $0.99 or $1.99/month subscriptions. If you're a "mid-level" cable network, you could instead work out a deal to put that content on Hulu and you might make more money in total even if you get less from each individual subscriber.

My biggest worry is actually ESPN. ESPN's business is built on getting super high carriage rates; they get well over $7 for the base channel alone from each cable subscriber, including many who may not ever watch ESPN. If they are forced to only charge subscribers who are specifically subscribing to ESPN, they'd have to charge significantly more, which might well be more than the market is willing to pay, even for desirable sports content. I just don't see how they'll be able to afford to offer their same depth of sports content in a post-cable future, even without considering that all the leagues are starting their own networks and subscription services.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong

Last edited by Robo : 2019-08-24 at 21:05.
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